French Bread

There are two very important things I've learned from making French bread. You don't need a special pan (though I use one now) to have it rise and hold its shape. The trick is you don't let it double in size. It rises in the oven to its full shape. The other thing I like to do is to put a pan of boiling water on the bottom rack of the oven. This makes a nice crisp crust. I received this recipe from my sister-in-law. When she makes this recipe, she makes 3 loaves on a cookie sheet. I make 2 in the French bread pans.

The first time I made this to the letter. I couldn't belive I made something so good . Crusty crust dense and soft middle. In other words perfect. I added more boiling water half way through baking, because my cookie sheet was baked dry .
The second time I made this with 1/4 c milk and 1/4 olive oil , instead of 1/2 cup of the hot water. As suggected by another zaar chef ,even yummyer if you can belive that. But again I had to add water half way through as the cookie sheet had baked dry .
The third time I made a loaf and rolls , as I had double the baking to do, I put a 13 x 9 cake pan in the bottom of the oven and filled it with boiling water.The water lasted through the WHOLE bake time. 35 min for the loaf and 30 min. for the rolls. Thank you all for making me the french bread queen of Trego Street